Whole Wheat Vegan Sugar Cookies

Tis the season!
This is my favorite time of the year. I start listening to Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving.

This year was my first attempt at making whole wheat vegan sugar cookies. Boy has it been a journey. I experimented and changed the recipe around 5 times before I got it right. The first time I made them, they didn't hold their shape, and basically blew up in the oven. They didn't taste right either. They were oily to the touch and hard to chew. The second time I tried it they were too tough and crumbly. You would bite into and crumbs would fly everywhere. After this try, I changed the recipe and thought, I've definitely got it down.

Well, I was wrong. I was really far from what I thought was right. I tried what I thought was my "perfect recipe" at my friends house. A few of my friends got together to make cookies, and I walked in with all of my ingredients very optimistically, thinking "this is it, this is my best sugar cookie recipe". My friends and I put them in the oven and checked on them every 5 minutes until we realized they started looking like deformed peeps. Once they were out of the oven, we tried them, and they tasted great, but they didn't hold the shape of the cookie cutter. Even though the recipe was a complete fail, my friends and I had fun trying to guess the original shapes of our cookies.

That weekend, I never left the house. I spent the entire weekend fixing my recipe, hoping that I would eventually get it right. On my 5th attempt, I finally got it. The cookies were perfect. They held their shape, they were chewy and buttery, yet crunchy when you first bit in. I baked 4 batches and iced them with a vegan icing that I made with natural food dye. I gave them out to my friends and family, and saved the rest for myself to celebrate my cookie victory. 

Ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/2 cups organic earth balance
• 2 cups organic sugar 
• 3 tbsp organic cornstarch or arrowroot powder
• 1 tsp aluminum free baking powder
• optional: dash of cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325. Cream the earth balance, sugar, and cornstarch together. Slowly add the flour and baking powder while stirring and mush with your hands until it forms a dough. Roll out and bake for 8-12 minutes. Enjoy!